I just finished an exercise on “How to Create Miracles in Your Life.” I wrote up the following. It’s out of context so it may not make sense to everyone, but you may get the gist of it. I found it important. I had my biggest problems with this exercise last time. In the end I figured out the exercise with my interpretation. At first my biggest problem was with[…] Keep reading →

Here’s an old story that comes in many versions (here are seven), but I learned from Srikumar Rao‘s book Are You Ready to Succeed (text from this blog). An old man lived in a valley with his son, a handsome and dutiful youth. They lived a peaceful life despite a lack of material possessions. They were very happy. So much so, that neighbors began to get envious. One day, the[…] Keep reading →

When I first saw this picture, reading in the New York Times how “In South Korea Visit, Obama Visits Border and Warns North,” I thought little of it, until I thought back to my earlier post on leadership opportunities for U.S. Presidents. I consider visiting a militarized border admirable and addressing North Korea important. But standing behind bulletproof glass is nothing like the speeches of Kennedy and Reagan. Maybe North[…] Keep reading →

I expect to log into Facebook once more — to message my connections there that they won’t be able to find me there, why, and where to find me instead — then I’ll leave for good. Why leave? I knew I wanted to leave after Facebook made its privacy policy too intrusive for my tastes. I felt they had too much control over my personal data. Facebook is creepy, getting[…] Keep reading →

Everybody agrees nobody is perfect. We all have our faults. Yet some emerge as leaders and outstanding successes. I’ve come to believe leaders lead and successes succeed not in spite of their faults or weaknesses, but because of them. The things themselves don’t matter as much as the emotions we attach to them. Attach shame to something inherent about you and people will see a part of you as shameful.[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written about raising your awareness of your mental chatter (aka self-talk, internal monologue, voice of judgment, etc) and learning to voice it. I call both of those activities passive. You can also work actively with your mental chatter. Passive awareness and voicing of your mental chatter helps. In my experience going from unawareness to passive awareness improved my understanding of how my mind worked as much as anything. The[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I wrote on what power is. Today let’s look at status, again because I find the more precisely you understand a concept, the better you can use it. Status is important. Nearly everybody wants to have a higher status. Nobody wants to have the lowest status. So what is status? I came across this definition that works well for me. It doesn’t work as well as yesterday’s definition of[…] Keep reading →